Headwaters Fall 2019: Contingency Plan

CONTINGENCY PLAN Reducing dependency on the Colorado River in an era of shrinking supplies

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Pulse WELCOMING TRIBES TO THE TABLE The 29 Native American tribes with rights to Colorado River water are fighting for inclusion—and collaboration.

23 AN INTERNATIONAL MODEL FOR TRANSBOUNDARY RIVER COOPERATION Recent binational agreements or “minutes,” established in 2012 and 2017, lay out how the U.S. and Mexico will continue to share, conserve and restore the shrinking Colorado River. What progress has been made and what comes next?

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Inside DIRECTOR’S NOTE

Contents | Fall 2019 Drought Contingency Planning on the Colorado River Colorado River Basin states, tribes, and Mexico share their dependency on the hard-working Colorado River and are also ready to share in its shortage. The Drought Contingency Plan (DCP), signed in 2019, sets the course for the next seven years, bringing cuts in water use to the lower basin and new water management tools to the upper basin. But, with the upper basin still exploring demand management and the DCP expiring in 2026, the work isn’t done.

4 WHAT WE’RE DOING

OVERVIEW

WEco's upcoming events, reporting and more.

5 FROM THE EDITOR

7 AROUND THE STATE

Water news from across Colorado.

8 MEMBER’S CORNER

Engage, volunteer and celebrate the impact of WEco’s work.

31

Beyond the Signing

9

After a committed push to forge an approach to cope with climate-changeinduced drought on the Colorado River, the Drought Contingency Plan is final. As implementation begins, the basin continues to reckon with a future likely to yield less water.

By Laura Paskus

LOW E R B A S I N

15

UPPER BASIN

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The Great Reconciliation

Avoiding Lake Powell’s Day Zero

For the lower basin, the Drought Contingency Plan brings near-immediate cuts in water use, starting in 2020 and continuing through 2026, or as long as reservoir levels in Lake Mead decline. Agreeing to this tightening of water use was painful, and living with it won’t be any easier.

The upper basin has new tools to manage water in dry years and to avoid mandatory cutbacks. Now begins the challenge of determining if each state, and its stakeholders will further hedge against risk and come to terms with hard realities by adopting a large-scale demand management program.

By Allen Best

By Lindsay Fendt

Above: The Yampa River in northwestern Colorado flows for about 250 miles before it meets the Green River on its way to the Colorado River. Adobe Stock On the cover: The Colorado River Basin has experienced drought since around 2000. The “bathtub ring” around Lake Powell reveals faded rock that was underwater in 1999, when the reservoir was nearly full at 97 percent of capacity. Adobe Stock

DIRECTOR’S NOTE

BOARD OF TRUSTEES

Jayla Poppleton Executive Director

Lisa Darling President

Jennie Geurts Director of Operations

Gregory J. Hobbs, Jr. Vice President

Stephanie Scott Leadership Programs Manager

I

t’s impossible to overstate the value of leadership in tough times. When crisis looms and competition, doubt, fear, or worse yet, complacency, threaten to take hold, our ability to move forward constructively hinges on dedicated, courageous leaders who can bring people together and forge a clear-headed path where the answers are anything but clear.

In September, together with Headwaters editor Caitlin Coleman, I attended the Colorado Basin Symposium, an event held biannually in Santa Fe in commemoration of the 1922 signing there of the Colorado River Compact. For a moment, those gathered in representation of all seven Colorado Basin states and Mexico, plus tribes, federal agencies and NGOs, celebrated the newly minted Drought Contingency Plan and complimented each other for making big things happen on the Colorado River. The leadership it took—on many levels—to achieve this milestone was evident…and inspiring.

After the celebration came the reality check. The DCP has yet to be implemented. The DCP still wasn’t as inclusive as it could have been. The DCP is only a Band-Aid. As the conversation focused on what we can learn from the DCP for future negotiations that aren’t so far off, the issue of leadership was raised.

People who have spent decades advancing stewardship and water sharing on the Colorado River are phasing out. At the next round of negotiations, new faces will be at the table—this leadership transition will be the river’s next big challenge.

Past Reclamation Commissioner Bob Johnson pointed to the leadership programs run by Water Education Colorado and the Water Education Foundation, our sister organization in California of which he is President: How can we use those programs to ensure incoming leaders “get it,” and that the knowledge gained, relationships built, and progress made continue?

Since 2006, WEco’s Water Leaders has trained 175 Colorado water professionals, advancing our mission and values by fostering thoughtful decision making and collaborative leadership, with an emphasis on emotional intelligence.

Those attributes are evident across Colorado, not least on the Colorado “Big River” issues. I see our Water Leaders program graduates leading on initiatives and solutions everywhere I turn. It’s no doubt a valuable program…and one that might be expanded.

As we explore the possibilities, we will keep modeling our own brand of leadership to move the needle on informed water decision making. Listening, learning, teaching, adapting, tackling the tough issues, with big doses of curiosity, commitment and humility…these qualities will continue to take Colorado, and the rest of the Colorado Basin, far.

Colorado faces critical times with much at stake. We’re counting on your support to keep developing knowledgeable, skilled, water-aware community members, public servants, professionals, and, of course, leaders.

—Executive Director—

4 • WAT E R E D U C AT I O N C O LO R A D O

STAFF

Scott Williamson Education & Outreach Coordinator Jerd Smith Fresh Water News Editor

Gregg Ten Eyck Secretary Alan Matlosz Treasurer Eric Hecox Past President Perry Cabot Nick Colglazier

Caitlin Coleman Headwaters Editor & Communications Specialist

Sen. Kerry Donovan

Charles Chamberlin Headwaters Graphic Designer

Julie Kallenberger

Jorge Figueroa Greg Johnson Scott Lorenz Dan Luecke Kevin McBride Amy Moyer Lauren Ris Rep. Dylan Roberts Travis Robinson Laura Spann Chris Treese Brian Werner

THE MISSION of Water Education Colorado is to promote increased understanding of water resource issues so Coloradans can make informed decisions. WEco is a non-advocacy organization committed to providing educational opportunities that consider diverse perspectives and facilitate dialogue in order to advance the conversation about water.

HEADWATERS magazine is published three times each year by Water Education Colorado. Its goals are to raise awareness of current water issues, and to provide opportunities for engagement and further learning.

THANK YOU to all who assisted in the development of this issue. Headwaters’ reputation for balance and accuracy in reporting is achieved through rigorous consultation with experts and an extensive peer review process, helping to make it Colorado’s leading publication on water. © Copyright 2019 by the Colorado Foundation for Water Education DBA Water Education Colorado. ISSN: 1546-0584

What we’re doing

CONGRATULATIONS WATER LEADERS! Congratulations to our 2019 Water Leaders Program graduating class! We are fortunate to partner with Cheryl Benedict of MORF Consulting to help these 16 individuals develop their leadership and communication skills. They are assets to their organizations and communities!

Matt Becker

Colorado Legislative Council

Ann Bunting

Town of Crestone

Audrey Butler

Boulder County Parks & Open Space

Sonja Chavez

Colorado River District

Cary Denison Trout Unlimited

Joe Donnelly Northern Water

Alicia DuPree

Jonathan Hernandez

Jason Marks

Jen Petrzelka

Michelle Johnson

Catherine Moravec

Julie Tinetti

Holly Loff

John Ott

Northern Water

Martin and Wood Water Consultants Eagle River Watershed Council

City of Aurora

Denver Water

Colorado Springs Utilities Animas Water Company

City of Greeley

Centennial Water and Sanitation District

Mike Willcox EOG Resources

We will begin accepting applications for the 2020 class on November 15. Add your name to a notification list by visiting watereducationcolorado.org/programs-events/water-leaders.

KEEPing WESTERN SLOPE WATER ON the WESTERN SLOPE SINCE 1937 W W W. C O L O R A D O R I V E R D I S T R I C T. O R G

Finding solutions for Western water: Colorado River Drought Contingency Plan Colorado Proposition DD California Sustainable Groundwater Management Act www.edf.org H E A DWAT E R S FA L L 2 0 1 9

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5

What we’re doing A conversation with…

CHRIS TREESE

TIME ON THE WECO BOARD: Eight years HOME: Glenwood Springs

Water Fluency Grads 2019!

This engaged class came thirsty for water knowledge and, based on their feedback, our 2019 course did not disappoint! The class of 35 received their certificates in September.

Thank you to 2019 Water Fluency Title Sponsors CoBank, Colorado Water Conservation Board, Colorado Water Resources and Power Development Authority and Special District Association of Colorado for making this experience possible.

SAVE THE DATE

2020 PRESIDENT’S RECEPTION FRIDAY, MAY 8, 2020 Join us for our annual awards event and fundraiser at Balistreri Vineyards in north Denver.

6 • WAT E R E D U C AT I O N C O LO R A D O

Recently retired after 28 years at the Colorado River District, Chris Treese is a longtime WEco board member. While working at the River District, Chris was responsible for legislative and regulatory lobbying, as well as water education and information efforts. In 2010, the River District, along with stakeholders across the state, began the Colorado River Water Bank Workgroup to study and pilot a voluntary and compensated approach to temporarily reduce consumptive uses of Colorado River water in Colorado. That experience is now providing some understanding as stakeholders grapple with whether and how to develop a demand management program to keep more water in the Colorado River. We talked with Chris to hear about demand management and the basin’s future.

Who needs to be involved in demand management?

For a demand management program to be successful, it is going to take a full array of stakeholders. The state is going to have to be a principal player for the administration, financing, and the technical accounting of how it all works. It has to involve the other three upper basin states, and it has to involve all seven basin states in order to develop a level of acceptance of how it works and for its monitoring. It also needs to involve the managers, the individual users, specifically agriculture, but not ag alone.

How might this change as the climate becomes more volatile?

Climate change has been included in our plan, but the need [for demand management] may become more immediate. Ultimately, we may not enjoy the luxury of time and study, and regrettably we may end up addressing this to implement [demand management] programs on a permanent and semi-permanent basis.

How does drought on the Colorado River look in your vision for the future?

The reality of drought is what we, as water managers, are focused on. As we plan for a drier future, we have to balance how we judge water uses and values. I have a vision of a Colorado that has fully come to grips with drought as an increasingly frequent reality.

This means sharing the water resource as well as any shortages, “the pie of pain.”

By Jacob Tucker Read more of the interview on the blog at watereducationcolorado.org.

What we’re doing Colorado Gives Day Help Water Education Colorado make a bigger impact by donating on Colorado Gives Day! Please give online at coloradogives.org/watereducationcolorado.

FROM THE EDITOR

T

UPDATE YOUR LIBRARY Water Education Colorado’s high-quality reference series just got better with publication of the Citizen’s Guide to Where Your Water Comes From, 2nd Edition. This guide provides an introduction to Colorado’s climate and hydrologic cycle, surface water’s path from mountain headwaters to use, the state’s major river basins and aquifers, and more.

Thank you to sponsors Aurora Water, Board of Water Works of Pueblo, Colorado Springs Utilities, Colorado Water Conservation Board, Denver Water, Northern Water, and Southwestern Water Conservation District.

CITIZEN’S GUIDE TO

Where Your Water Comes From SECOND EDITION

P R E PA R E D B Y W AT E R E D U C AT I O N C O LO R A D O

Find it in the WEco store or pour over it online at watereducationcolorado.org.

he Colorado River Drought Contingency Plan (DCP) and what it means for all who share the basin’s water has unfolded substantially over the past seven months, when we began reporting for this issue. Next steps seem to continually evolve with each new report, conference and meeting, but looking deeper into the future, the question “what’s next?” has no ready answer.

The 2019 DCP and the 2007 interim guidelines, two documents guiding Colorado River operations, both expire in 2026 but include a provision requiring renegotiation to begin by the end of 2020. While we don’t know how renegotiation will go, what river governance will look like after 2026, or the turns climate and hydrology will take, we’re likely due for more continuous change. Stakeholders are eager to manage risks, because the consequences of being caught unprepared are in many ways frightening.

This readying is happening locally and statewide—as in Colorado, where workgroups are hashing out the feasibility of establishing a demand management program to conserve and bank water on a large scale in case it is needed to buoy Lake Powell’s storage. But it’s also happening basin-wide.

The Colorado River Conversations Project is convening stakeholders throughout the basin to set the stage for renegotiations. Here, prepping means having more inclusive conversations about extreme events such as floods and drought. This work continued at a conference ( just as we sent this issue to press) where panels discussed what science, research, or topics need to be explored further to inform the renegotiations.

The project’s more intimate talks have transpired during two workshops, in June and October of 2019, focused on identifying potential future climate extremes and drivers that could intensify them. During the first workshop, participants identified “nightmare” scenarios—and came up with a long list of 70 issues to worry about.

The second workshop will continue the storylines of those nightmares, allowing participants to dream up how they could address and deal with such possible future realities.

“It’s helpful for everybody to feel uncomfortable together,” says Amy McCoy who is leading these conversations along with her business partner, Season Martin, and Kathy Jacobs, director of the Center for Climate Adaptation Science and Solutions at the University of Arizona. “Talking about scary futures is uncomfortable, but if people can come together to feel uncomfortable together, I think there’s an opportunity for creativity to emerge,” McCoy says.

Facing our worries head-on, learning from others’ concerns, perspectives and experiences, and bringing information and solutions to the table can help us imaginatively reduce risks, together.

—Editor—

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Around the state | BY JERD SMITH “We know to get to the next level we've got to have some real money. To be successful, we need to run our numbers and be able to clearly go to the public and say, this is what we're going to do.”

Russ George, director of Colorado’s Interbasin Compact Committee, on addressing the state’s water supply challenges at C9—the statewide summit of Colorado’s nine basin roundtables—in September 2019.

RIO GRANDE RIVER BASIN A new $1.3 million radar system designed to improve weather forecasting in the San Luis Valley is complete. The project was backed by the Rio Grande Water Conservation District, the Conejos Water Conservancy District, and the Colorado Water Conservation Board, among others.

SAN JUAN/DOLORES RIVER BASIN

ARKANSAS RIVER BASIN

GUNNISON RIVER BASIN

The Southeastern Colorado Water Conservancy District dedicated the new James W. Broderick Hydropower Plant at Pueblo Dam in September. The $20.5 million project was completed in May. The power plant will generate an average of 28 million kilowatt-hours of electricity annually, or enough for 2,500 homes, according to the district. Power will be sold to the City of Fountain and Fort Carson through Colorado Springs Utilities.

Taylor Park Reservoir, like many across Colorado, finished the irrigation season well ahead on storage, with 77,000 acre-feet of water, ahead of the 75,000 acre-foot goal, according to the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation. The reservoir, which serves the Uncompaghre Valley, saw major inflows this year, with runoff measuring 147 percent of average, according to an October update from Reclamation.

NORTH PLATTE RIVER BASIN

COLORADO RIVER BASIN Aspen is among several water agencies that has begun using air-based laser technology to measure snowpack, according to a report from Aspen Journalism. The program was developed by NASA and its Jet Propulsion Laboratory and has been tested by the Colorado Water Conservation Board for several years. The idea behind the new system is that it can dramatically enhance the accuracy of traditional ground-based SNOTEL data.

The Town of Walden, having installed a floating solar array to power its water treatment plant, is now serving as a model for other towns in the state. Walden officials are hopeful the array will produce enough electricity to completely fuel the town’s water treatment plant, which came online in October 2018, according to a report in the Denver Post.

2019 percentage of state in drought

0% 60.8% AS OF JUNE 1

AS OF OCTOBER 22

8 • WAT E R E D U C AT I O N C O LO R A D O

A Colorado Parks and Wildlife survey has found that the 416 Fire of 2018 resulted in an 80 percent reduction in the fish population of the Animas River, a finding CPW said was not surprising given the severity of the fire. In a report in the Durango Herald, CPW officials said this year’s heavy snows and big runoff have been a huge help to the river’s recovery.

SOUTH PLATTE RIVER BASIN The City of Denver and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers have joined forces to launch an $11 million project to rehabilitate a stretch of the South Platte River that has been damaged over the years by development and the dams at Chatfield Reservoir and Bear Creek Lake.

YAMPA/WHITE RIVER BASIN The Nature Conservancy has launched a Yampa River Basin Fund to help preserve and protect the Yampa River and its habitat. The Nature Conservancy has raised more than $2 million toward its goal of $4.75 million, according to reports in the Steamboat Pilot. Steamboat Resort contributed $500,000 to the fund, whose cash proceeds will be used to purchase water needed to help the stream during dry times, among other things.

BEYOND THE SIGNING What the Drought Contingency Plan means for the Colorado River Basin

T

his year, the seven U.S. states that rely upon water from the Colorado River developed yet another agreement about how to share the river’s waters, this time in the face of prolonged drought and climate change.

On April 16, 2019, President Donald Trump signed into law the act authorizing the U.S. Department of the Interior (DOI) to execute and implement the Colorado River Drought Contingency Plan (DCP) through 2026. By that time, DOI and the basin states will likely have developed another new plan for operating the Colorado River.

A lot has changed since the Colorado River Compact first divvied up the river’s waters in 1922. Today, more than 40 million people in two countries rely upon the Colorado River, which originates on the western slope of the Rocky Mountains in northern Colorado, and is fed by major tributaries like the Green, Gunnison and San Juan rivers. Cities from Denver to San Diego, though geographically outside of the natural river basin, divert water from the river for drinking and industry, and farmers irrigate 5.5 million acres of everything from alfalfa to melons.

The Colorado River Basin is also now more than 2 degrees Fahrenheit warmer than the twentieth century average—with “hotter” droughts

BY LAURA PASKUS Courtesy U.S. Bureau of Reclamation

H E A DWAT E R S FA L L 2 0 1 9

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OV E RVI EW

depleting river flows. By necessity, as the climate continues to change, bringing continued warming and drying, shortage-sharing agreements on the river must continuously be updated to keep changing, too. That’s why the DCP was needed, and why it will sunset in 2026.

THE DCP’S PREDECESSOR

T If you consider where we are today with the DCP and Minute 323, and a variety of other things that have happened along the way, the difference between what we have now and what we had in 2007 is very significant.”

Anne Castle Getches-Wilkinson Center for Natural Resources, Energy, and the Environment

← PRECEDING PAGE: On May 20, 2019, representatives from the seven Colorado River Basin states, the U.S. Department of the Interior, and the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation signed the Drought Contingency Plan at the Hoover Dam. 10 • W A T E R E D U C A T I O N C O L O R A D O

he DCP’s origins lie with the Colorado River Interim Guidelines for Lower Basin Shortages and Coordinated Operations for Lake Powell and Lake Mead, which DOI, the states, and stakeholders developed in 2007 to address the Colorado River’s deteriorating storage levels.

The interim guidelines identify how to operate the two major reservoirs on the Colorado River, Lake Powell and Lake Mead, under hotter, drier conditions, to share the risk of shrinking water supplies between the upper and lower basins.

In the 1920s, the framers of the compact divided up to 15 million acre-feet of consumptive use water between the upper and lower basins as measured at Lee Ferry, just downstream of Lake Powell. They allocated 7.5 million acre-feet per year to the lower basin—Arizona, California, Nevada, and parts of Utah and New Mexico—and 7.5 million acre-feet to the upper basin—Colorado, New Mexico, Utah, Wyoming, and some of Arizona. Another 1 million acre-feet of annual consumptive use was allocated to the lower basin for flows from the Gila River, a tributary that enters the Colorado near Yuma, Arizona. Although the upper basin’s share was intended to equal that of the lower basin, the upper basin states cannot cause the river’s flow to fall below 75 million acre-feet at the Lee Ferry gauge over any consecutive 10-year period, or an average of 7.5 million acre-feet per year. In addition, another 1.5 million acre-feet must flow to Mexico each year, under the Mexican Water Treaty of 1944.

But the 2007 interim guidelines, while temporarily keeping the basin out of crisis, did not anticipate the extent of drought that the basin would experience. In 2013, then-Secretary of the Interior Sally Jewell directed states to consider additional measures or face unilateral federal action to avoid a potential crisis. With its own interests to protect, including water deliveries to contractors and tribal water rights, the federal government needed states to put a more robust plan in place.

That led to the latest temporary plan, the DCP, which negotiators say provides some security in avoiding a potential crash of the Colorado River system as water users plan for and use the river’s water even under dry hydrological conditions.

The DCP was also critical to binational coop-

eration on the Colorado River. In the decades since the United States and Mexico signed the 1944 treaty, the two countries have negotiated “minutes,” which clarify the treaty on issues ranging from deliveries to salinity levels. Most recently, with Minute 323, Mexico agreed to a Binational Water Scarcity Contingency Plan, but one that would only take effect once the U.S. adopted its own drought contingency plan.

“If you consider where we are today with the DCP and Minute 323, and a variety of other things that have happened along the way, the difference between what we have now and what we had in 2007 is very significant,” says Anne Castle, senior fellow at the Getches-Wilkinson Center for Natural Resources, Energy, and the Environment at the University of Colorado-Boulder, and former assistant secretary for water and science at DOI. The volume of water being conserved and foregone in the lower basin is significant, she says, and so are the agreements with Mexico.

“Those things result from a realization that it’s an immensely complex river system and the only way we’re going to have sustainability into the future—and power the economies that rely upon that water—is to have cooperative agreements that involve a pretty broad spectrum of water users up and down the river,” Castle says. “Those agreements need to allow steps to be taken that will address this continued decrease in flows we’re seeing.”

Six years in the making, the DCP includes two plans, hammered out separately by the lower and upper basin states. The upper basin plan focuses on flexibility in reservoir operations during drought conditions, investigating how to reduce water demands—including with voluntary water conservation programs—and weather modification to augment precipitation. In the lower basin, the process needed to move more quickly because water use already exceeds allocations.

Cities and farms in Arizona, California and Nevada agreed to scale back and take deeper cuts as Lake Mead reaches threshold elevations that trigger those cutbacks. This summer, the first threshold was triggered, so Arizona and Nevada will implement their first-ever cuts in 2020.

Developing plans for each basin was tricky considering that within each state there are also individual tribes, competing interests, and conflicts between urban and rural water users.

But, pushed by a deadline from U.S. Bureau of Reclamation Commissioner Brenda Burman, in March 2019, the seven states asked Congress to provide necessary authorizations to execute their final plans. In an era when Congress spends much of its time at an impasse, legislators on

both sides of the aisle recognized the need for drought planning. In April, federal legislators passed the Colorado River Drought Contingency Plan Authorization Act and the following month, on May 20, representatives from the seven basin states and DOI signed completed upper and lower basin drought contingency plans.

But the DCP is only a temporary measure to get the basin through the next seven years. Next, water users, states, and water managers will grapple with the reality of a lower basin structural deficit where, even when there’s adequate snowpack and runoff, more water has been allocated than flows through the river.

NOT A NEW PROBLEM

A

s Eric Kuhn and John Fleck write in their new book, “Science Be Dammed: How Ignoring Inconvenient Science Drained the Colorado River,” even during compact negotiations in the 1920s, records showed the river’s annual flows were lower than the total 17.5 million acre-feet allocated to the seven states and Mexico. In fact, three different studies during the 1920s estimated natural river flows at Lee Ferry at between 14.3 million acre-feet and 16.1 million acre-feet.

Planners chose to ignore that information, Fleck says, and with it, they ignored convincing evidence showing the basin regularly experienced long periods of drought. “We have rules written Adobe Stock

down on paper, allocating water across the basin, that essentially allocate more water than the river actually has—and this manifests itself quite differently in the lower basin than the upper basin,” says Fleck, director of the Water Resources Program at the University of New Mexico. Fleck’s co-author Kuhn is the nowretired general manager of the Colorado River Water Conservation District.

In the lower basin, California, Nevada and Arizona have long overused their allocation, Fleck says, whereas the upper basin states have yet to develop beyond an annual usage of around 4 million acre-feet. But everyone needs to come to terms with the fact that there is less water in the basin, Fleck says. “And that’s what the DCP is,” he says. “The first steps toward a long-term plan for everyone to use less water.”

Today, Kuhn and Fleck note, the river’s average flow between 2000 and 2018 has been only 12.4 million acre-feet—16 percent lower than the 1906–2017 average of 14.8 million acre-feet per year.

To use less water, the two basins need their own strategies. In the lower basin, the DCP sets rules to scale back use of lower basin allocations as Lake Mead drops, or until storage conditions improve.

Arizona, Nevada and Mexico will see cuts in 2020, while California could follow in future years if reservoir storage declines continue. Over the past few years, water users already started scaling back,

↑ Colorado River flows through the Grand Canyon are determined by releases out of Lake Powell and measured as they pass Lee Ferry, the point on the river that divides the upper and lower basins at the border of Utah and Arizona, often considered the start of the Grand Canyon.

CONTINUED ON PAGE 14 H E A DWAT E R S FA L L 2 0 1 9

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Risk Management and Cutbacks on the Colorado The Colorado River is no longer operated as it was when the compact was signed in 1922.

Between 2000 and 2019, more than 20 million acre-feet of water, or 60 percent of the system, disappeared, with most of that drop occurring between 2000 and 2004. Living with less water has led to a rapid series of changes in the Law of the River. The Colorado River Basin took its latest step in dealing with low flows, declining reservoir levels, and a changing climate in 2019, when the basin states, Bureau of Reclamation, and Interior Department adopted the Drought Contingency Plan, and with that action, activated the Binational Water Scarcity Contingency Plan. The plans, layered on the

existing 2007 interim guidelines, look to hedge risk by reducing some dependence on the Colorado River.

The upper basin will be able to operate its reservoirs to maintain water levels in Lake Powell while exploring the possibility of developing a demand management program.

It will also continue water augmentation activities like cloud seeding, and will continue “equalizing” the contents of lakes Powell and Mead, per the interim guidelines, but with a 500,000 acre-foot drought pool that would be exempted from the re-balancing. Under the interim guidelines, releases out of Powell are prescribed based on water levels in both Powell

and Mead, to balance the reservoirs and the risk of shortage.

For the lower basin, the DCP, interim guidelines, and the Binational Water Scarcity Contingency Plan lay out cuts in water deliveries from the Colorado River, triggered by projections of Lake Mead storage elevations.

While the interim guidelines already dictated cuts, beginning with Mead reaching 1,075 feet above sea level, the DCP created a new “tier zero” at 1,090 feet and added additional cuts for the lower basin states and Mexico to absorb. The greatest cuts to lower basin water use will come from Arizona and California, but all states and Mexico will share in scarcity.

Lake Mead Delivery Reductions for 2007 Interim Guidelines and Drought Contingency Plans ARIZONA Interim Guidelines and DCP

NEVADA Interim Guidelines and DCP

MEXICO MIN 323 and Water Scarcity Contingency Plan

CALIFORNIA DCP

Lake Mead storage elevations 1,075'–1,090'

192 8 41

Tier Zero

1,050'–1,075'

512 21

80

Shortage conditions

1,045'–1,050'

592 25

1,040'–1,045'

640

27

1,035'–1,040'

640

27

154

1,030'–1,035'

640

27

162

1,025'–1,030'

640

27

104

720

Less than 1,025' 0 In thousands of acre-feet

300

146

200 250

Inactive pool 300

171

350

30

600

275

350

900

1,200

The Law of the River and Lake Powell and Lake Mead Combined Storage 60

1970

Long Range Operating Criteria

Reservoir storage in millions of acre-feet

Combined maximum capacity

50

1974

1968

Colorado River Basin Project Act

40

1948

Upper Colorado River Basin Compact

1944

Colorado River Basin Salinity Control Act

1964

1956

Consolidated Supreme Court Decree, Arizona v.

California

Colorado River Storage Project Act

U.S.-Mexico Water Treaty

30

20

10

1922

Colorado River Compact

1928

0 1937

Boulder Canyon Project Act

1947

12 • W A T E R E D U C A T I O N C O L O R A D O

1957

1967

1977

7

For the major reservoirs in the Colorado Basin, the 2007 interim guidelines outlined a method for determining annual releases to balance storage and the risk of shortage based on reservoir elevations. The DCP added deeper cuts to releases from Lake Mead.

WY Great Salt Lake Salt Lake City

Colorado River Basin

Cheyenne

Provo

LEGEND

UPPER BASIN

Colorado River Basin Native American lands inside the basin boundaries Areas outside side of basin receiving basin water ter

UT

C

do

a or

ol

r ve

Ri

GRAND CANYON N. P.

Lake Powell Elevation and Storage Equalization tier 24.3 million acre-feet (maf)

Upper elevation balancing tier Release 8.23 maf. If Mead falls <9.4 maf, balance contents with a release of 7–9 maf

CO

Pueblo blo

GLEN CANYON DAM

CA Santa Fe

Los Angeles

Mid-level release tier Release 7.48 maf or 8.23 if Mead <5.8 maf

3,575'

Lower-level balancing tier Balance with release of 7–9.5 maf Inactive pool 4.0 maf Little or no hydropower generation

3,525'

Dead pool 1.9 maf Can not drain the reservoir by gravity

3,370'

3,490'

Lake Mead Elevation and Storage

Albuquerque

AZ

Surplus conditions 25.9 maf Release more than 7.5 maf

1,219.6'

Normal or ICS*conditions 15.9 maf

1,145'

Phoenix

San Diego

Release 7.5 maf

Yuma UN M

PACIFIC OCEAN

3,636'

OCT. 1: 3,592.15'

HOOVER DAM

Salton Sea

3,700'

Equalize, avoid spills or release 8.23 maf

Colorado Springs

Lake Powell

Lake Mead

Co Fort Collins

Denver

NV

Las Vegas

ROCKY MOUNTAIN N. P.

Gulf of California

Tier Zero

IT

ED EX S I C TAT O

1,090'

Shortage conditions ES

M EX I C O

1,075'

OCT. 1: 1,083.07'

Inactive pool 7.5 maf Little or no hydropower generation

1,050'

Dead pool 2.0 maf Can not drain the reservoir by gravity

895'

1,025'

* Intentionally Created Surplus

1999

Offstream Storage Rule 1992

2001

Interim Surplus Guidelines

2003

Grand Canyon Protection Act

Colorado River Water Delivery Agreement

2007

Interim Guidelines for Lower Basin Shortages and Coordinated Operations for Lakes Powell and Mead

2019

Drought Contingency Plan and Binational Water Scarcity Contingency Plan

2012 & 2017

Initiatives with Mexico (Minutes 319 & 323)

LAKE POWELL STORAGE

LAKE MEAD STORAGE

1987

1997

2007

2017 H E A DWAT E R S FA L L 2 0 1 9

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CONTINUED FROM PAGE 11

says Fleck, but doing so voluntarily: “The DCP gives the structure that gives us the confidence [the cutbacks] will continue,” he says.

The upper basin occupies a precarious position of its own, even though it uses less water than it technically could under the compacts that govern its use—use in the upper basin has remained flat, at around 4 million acre-feet per year, since 1990.

Because upper basin states must not interfere with a specific quantity of water flowing downstream, they’ll take on much of the burden of dealing with declining flows in a warmer future, Fleck adds. “That means the upper basin has to be sure it has the tools in place to make sure it can continue to meet its compact obligations, to send water out of Lake Powell,” he says. “And it may have to figure out how to conserve water below 4 million acre-feet.” For the upper basin states, avoiding a compact violation equates to more security and control over their share of the river. Whereas, a violation could open the door to unknowns like litigation or even revisions to the compact.

CHALLENGES OF A WARMING WORLD

A

ny planning on the Colorado River—from the crops farmers plant, to the ways in which cities incentivize conservation among customers, to the DCP’s successor—must address the fact that the basin is facing a hotter, drier future.

Rainfall records, reconstructed from tree ring chronologies that stretch back more than a thousand years, reveal past patterns of southwestern droughts, marked by dry conditions associated with natural climate variability. Today’s droughts in the basin are different. They are notable not just for a lack of precipitation, but also for warmer temperatures, which spur changes in snowpack, increase transpiration in forests and fields, and boost evaporation from reservoirs.

Amplifying and building upon previous national and international reports, the U.S. Global Change Program’s Fourth National Climate Assessment in 2018 painted a troublesome picture of reduced water supplies and future food insecurity in the region. It also identified risks to southwestern tribes from drought and wildfire, and challenges to the region’s infrastructure and energy supplies.

More localized studies of the Colorado River Basin also show that as climate change continues to heat and dry the region, the river’s flows will keep dropping. A 2017 study by Brad Udall, a senior water and climate research scientist at the Colorado Water Institute at Colorado State

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University and Jonathan Overpeck, dean of the School for Environment and Sustainability at the University of Michigan, showed that flows between 2000 and 2014 averaged 19 percent below the 1906–1999 average, with one-third of those losses due to higher temperatures, versus changes in precipitation. If warming continues, according to that 2017 study, Colorado River flows could decline by 20 to 35 percent by 2050 and 30 to 55 percent by the end of the century.

A study published the following year by Udall and others reiterated that “unprecedented basin-wide warming” was responsible for the declines, this time looking at 1916 through 2014, when the river’s flows dropped by 16.5 percent during that period, even though annual precipitation had increased slightly. The study also revealed the entire basin’s sensitivity to shifts in precipitation patterns—that it matters whether precipitation comes as rain or snow, and also where it falls. Snowfall in the upper basin is more beneficial to the system, for example, than rainfall in southern Arizona. And the future doesn’t look promising: The 2018 study forecasts a future decline in snowfall within four sub-basins in Colorado.

Healthier snowpack this past winter offered everyone a bit of a reprieve, but the Colorado River Basin’s problems aren’t over. At the end of the water year, total system storage was at only 53 percent, according to Reclamation, though that’s up from just under 47 percent in October 2018.

And, Udall says, “Higher temperatures are here to stay, and higher temperatures reduce flows.”

Most of all, he says that any plans concerning the future of the Colorado River, and everyone who relies upon it, must deal with “significant flow reductions in the future.” Planning for 2026, when the 2007 interim guidelines expire, is set to start soon. In the unlikely event that states don’t have something new in place by 2026, operations of the river and its reservoirs revert back to operating criteria developed in 1970.

“This is a really big [water] year, so I think everybody’s happy, but to think somehow the drought is over and climate change isn’t happening—or to hope for the best and ignore the lessons of the last 19 years—I think these high temperatures will remind people, ‘This is not the same old game we used to play in the 20th century.’” H Laura Paskus is a reporter in Albuquerque, N.M., where her show, “Our Land: New Mexico’s Environmental Past, Present and Future,” airs on New Mexico PBS. Her book, “At the Precipice: New Mexico’s Changing Climate” is forthcoming from the University of New Mexico Press.

LOWE R BASIN

THE GREAT RECONCILIATION The lower basin gets real about overuse, deficits and shortage sharing

S

tanding atop Hoover Dam, peering over the chain-link fence down its 726-foot concave face of concrete, you simply feel impressed. The dam tamed the Colorado River’s floods and created a reservoir, Lake Mead, able to hold 26.1 million acre-feet of water, not quite two years of annual flows, when full at an elevation of almost 1,220 feet.

But Lake Mead has been nowhere close to

full for most of the 21st century. The widening “bathtub ring” of white in the once-black, volcanic rocks of Boulder Canyon documents the reservoir’s 190-foot fall. Despite a rambunctious runoff from the previous winter’s snowpack in the Rocky Mountains, the reservoir was 61 percent empty by mid-August 2019. The U.S. Bureau of Reclamation that same month projected the reservoir would be below 1,090 feet on January 1, 2020. That finding triggered the first-ever delivery cuts to Arizona, Nevada and Mexico under

BY ALLEN BEST Jirka Matousek / Flickr

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Effectively, we’ve been able to get away with it because the upper basin hasn’t developed as rapidly, but we’re living on borrowed time.”

Jeffrey Kightlinger Metropolitan Water District of Southern California

← PRECEDING PAGE: The construction of Hoover Dam created Lake Mead in 1935, which serves as the primary storage reservoir in the lower Colorado River Basin. Water levels in Mead have declined significantly since 2000 when the reservoir peaked at more than 1,200 feet above sea level. As of October 2019, the reservoir is less than 40 percent full at just over 1,080 feet above sea level.

16 • W A T E R E D U C A T I O N C O L O R A D O

the Lower Basin Drought Contingency Plan, or DCP, signed by the basin states in 2019.

It’s a new era in the lower Colorado River Basin. The 20th century was one of engineering triumphs, ever more straws inserted into the river in defiance of geography and the innate aridity of the lower basin, the region below Lee Ferry, Arizona. This includes portions of Arizona, Nevada and California along with the Mexican states of Sonora and Baja California but also tribal lands, sovereign yet part of the United States. Water stored in Mead and other vessels gives Las Vegas Boulevard its fountains and faux falls, grocery stores across the country a reliable delivery of broccoli, lettuce and spinach in mid-winter, and Phoenix, San Diego and other metropolitan areas their prosperity.

Now comes a period of cutting back, pinching water deliveries for a time or perhaps forever.

The first rude shock of this new challenge arrived during the first four years of the 21st century, the river delivering only 63 percent of what was then defined as normal at Lee Ferry. During the same period, in 2003, then-Interior Secretary Gale Norton ordered annual Colorado River deliveries to California cut to 4.4 million acre-feet, the state’s legal apportionment under the Boulder Canyon Project Act of 1928. The state had been taking 5.3 million acre-feet. It did so because it could. Nobody was being shorted, save for the river’s delta at the Gulf of California, which has not reliably seen water since the 1960s.

The Bureau of Reclamation then began working with the seven U.S. basin states to develop a plan if water-short years continued. The result in 2007 was the Colorado River Interim Guidelines for Lower Basin Shortages and Coordinated Operations for Lakes Powell and Mead. By identifying cuts in water deliveries to the lower basin keyed to reservoir elevations, the guidelines aimed to keep Mead from falling to worrisome levels. At 1,075 feet, the crisis would become real and deliveries to Arizona and Nevada would be cut. Those cuts deepen at 1,050 feet, when Mead is at 29 percent of capacity and hydroelectric production at Hoover Dam ends. More cuts come at 1,025. At elevation 895, Mead can no longer release water downstream. It’s called dead pool.

Water levels in Mead have flirted with but never crossed 1,075, the trigger for a shortage declaration under the interim guidelines. In 2013, after two years of exceptionally low flows, the Bureau of Reclamation and the seven states agreed an additional cushion was needed. That’s what the Lower Basin DCP provides, with cuts to lower basin states beginning sooner, at 1,090 feet, and greater cuts at lower elevations.

The Lower Basin DCP can be seen as part of the

broader Colorado River DCP and a 2017 agreement called Minute 323 that was tacked onto the 1944 U.S.-Mexico water treaty, committing Mexico to deeper shortage sharing.

Two giant issues still loom, unresolved by the DCP. First, it does not address what experts call the “structural deficit.” Lower basin states have been using 1.2 million acre-feet annually more than the river delivers on average. Evaporation and system losses are not assessed against the lower basin. “Effectively, we’ve been able to get away with it because the upper basin hasn’t developed as rapidly,” Jeffrey Kightlinger, general manager of the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California, explained to the Los Angeles Times in February 2019. “But we’re living on borrowed time.”

Second, the river will likely deliver even less water in the future. Rising temperatures have been robbing the river of water, part of a climatic shift with no end in sight.

Belt-tightening identified in the DCP, though temporary, should suffice until a broader reassessment of Colorado River operations is completed.

The DCP and interim guidelines expire in 2026, by which time a new river management plan will likely be in effect.

ARIZONA

O

f the lower basin states, Arizona has the most at stake in keeping Mead above crisis level.

The Colorado River Compact apportions the state 2.8 million acre-feet annually, dwarfing Nevada’s allocation of 300,000 acre-feet. The Colorado River provides nearly 40 percent of Arizona’s water.

The Central Arizona Project, or CAP, delivers 1.6 million acre-feet, more than half of the state’s Colorado River supply. In 1968, when authorizing CAP funding, Congress conceded California’s demand that CAP water be junior in priority to California. That means CAP users take shortages first if Mead levels decline.

Before signing the DCP, Arizona had to develop an intra-state plan. It was a pained but ultimately self-affirming experience. Arizona began its discussion in 2015 but got little done amid internal squabbling. Then a good snow year in the Rockies caused Mead to rise. One CAP director even wondered publicly whether planning for future shortages was necessary. That myopia was dispelled by the winter of 2017–2018. It was the fifth-driest year on record, with flows from the upper basin, source of 92 percent of the river’s water, just 41 percent of average. As Arizona dithered, Reclamation Commissioner Brenda Burman warned that if Arizona and other

states didn’t take action by January 31, 2019, her agency would.

With a hard deadline and a sharp decline in river flows, Arizona’s major water agencies, the Arizona Department of Water Resources and CAP, coalesced by June 2018 to lead a transparent and inclusive 42-member task force. The result was 14 distinct agreements that together constitute compromises, payments, and water transfers to reduce use, some temporarily and others permanently.

Then Arizona legislators had to approve their state’s drought contingency plan.

“It was emotionally charged, because not everybody was going to be pleased,” says Rosanna Gabaldón, a state representative whose district straddles Tucson and rural areas. For a time, Gabaldón doubted Arizona could agree on a drought package.

But the legislation was signed with six hours to spare. Upon her review, Burman said both Arizona and California hadn’t completed their work, but they met her extended deadline of March 4.

Arizona’s cuts come almost entirely from the 1.6 million acre-feet pumped from the Colorado River through the CAP. CAP’s 336-mile canal crosses Phoenix and Tucson and reaches farmers in Pinal County, between the metropolitan areas.

In 2020, because the Bureau of Reclamation’s Peter McBride

August 2019 24-month study projected Lake Mead to fall below 1,090 feet by January 1, 2020, Arizona this year will take 6.9 percent less, or a 192,000 acre-foot cut. If Mead drops to 1,075 feet, as remains distinctly possible, Arizona could lose up to an additional 512,000 acre-feet, though some of that water could be recovered at a later date if storage recovers. At 1,025 feet, it cuts back up to 720,000 acre-feet, or nearly 26 percent of its Colorado River water.

Cities fare well enough in this squeezing exercise. Phoenix and six of its suburbs will see successive cuts beginning at Mead elevations of 1,075 feet. For Tucson, the spigot tightening begins at 1,045 feet and tightens even more at 1,025.

However, only if Lake Mead falls to 1,000 feet would Tucson possibly have to cut water sent to homes or businesses.

Agriculture takes Arizona’s biggest hit. That was expected. If agriculture was the primary argument for the CAP in the 1960s, it had the lowest priority among the contracts. This use is almost entirely in Pinal County. Flat and mostly rural, most drivers on Interstate 10 between Phoenix and Tucson hurry through it. The county’s 200 farms produce 45 percent of Arizona’s cattle, 42 percent of its cotton and cottonseed, and 39 percent of its

↑The Central Arizona Project, or CAP, moves Colorado River water more than 336 miles to serve the major metropolitan areas of Phoenix (above) and Tucson, but also to fulfill tribal water rights and meet the needs of agricultural water users. Cuts in Arizona water use, outlined in the Drought Contingency Plan, come almost entirely from the CAP, first affecting agriculture.

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We had made our peace with the compromises that needed to be made for the intra-state agreement, which was rather like an elaborate exercise in moving the deck chairs on the Titanic to spread the pain.”

Kirsten Engel Arizona State Representative

18 • W A T E R E D U C A T I O N C O L O R A D O

milk, according to a study commissioned by Pinal County irrigation districts. Cities were unimpressed. The total economic output of these Pinal County farms, they pointed out, was half that of the state’s golf courses.

Groundwater was the sole source of water in Pinal County from 1940 to about 1990, when CAP water arrived. Farmers, though, couldn’t repay even the subsidized costs of CAP’s capital-intensive infrastructure. In 2004, they agreed to a shorter-term contract for Colorado River water while being relieved of infrastructure costs. This lower-priced water is also subject to availability, however. Irrigators were already scheduled to stop receiving CAP water entirely by 2030. The plan was for farmers to then return to exclusive groundwater use. Arizona’s DCP will cause the farmers to lose a third of their water in years 2020-2022 and lose deliveries altogether in 2023, seven years earlier than previously scheduled.

Arizona’s compromise yielded the Groundwater Infrastructure Fund, which identifies $50 million—$20 million of it state money—for Pinal County farmers to finance new groundwater-pumping infrastructure. Not all legislators supported the aid.

“We had made our peace with the compromises that needed to be made for the intra-state agreement, which was rather like an elaborate exercise in moving the deck chairs on the Titanic to spread the pain,” says State Rep. Kirsten Engel, a Democrat from the Tucson area. “But many of us drew the line at funding groundwater-pumping infrastructure, which to us was going backwards.

The last thing we should be doing is returning to depleting our groundwater aquifers.”

Will this cause farmers to pump groundwater below Pinal County to extinction? Probably—assuming that Lake Mead continues to sag. Application of Colorado River water across the cotton and alfalfa fields allowed the aquifer to rise to nearly 1940 levels. With no river water percolating into the aquifer, it will inexorably decline. Other, less thirsty crops have been getting attention: industrial hemp and a shrub called guayle, which produces an alternative to rubber. But these conversations occur in the margins.

New conservation efforts, including those in agriculture, will benefit from $2 million appropriated by state legislators. Arizona Gov. Douglas Ducey also replaced a council focused on water augmentation with one responsible for studying innovation and conservation.

New political strength of tribes, particularly those in Arizona, was evident in the drought contingency planning. Arizona tribes get 12.5 percent of the state’s water directly from the Colorado

River and another 17.5 percent of CAP water. The Gila River Indian Community alone has 311,000 acre-feet, the largest single contract for CAP water.

Their reservation just south of Phoenix was created in 1859, giving it the highest priority. The intra-Arizona DCP gives the Gila River Indian Community $92 million for 200,000 acre-feet lost in the DCP’s seven-year life. They also lose additional water that tribal officials value at $30 to $50 million. For the Gila River Indian Community, the DCP negotiations were something of a coming-out party. With European settlement, the tribe was dispossessed of their water until the Arizona Water Settlement Act of 2004 allowed the tribe to use water rights that had previously existed only on paper. Even so, the Gila were not invited to be at the table at the outset of DCP planning. “Tribes have to be at the policy table,” said Governor Stephen Roe Lewis. Now, they definitely are.

The Colorado River Indian Tribes—consisting of four distinct tribes, the Mohave, Chemehuevi, Hopi and Navajo, with a reservation that stretches along the Colorado River in Arizona and California— also played a significant role. They divert nearly 600,000 acre-feet directly from the Colorado River at the border between Arizona and California, with priority dates from 1865–1874. “This is not CAP water. It is not subject to being cut. It is the highest priority water in the lower basin,” explained Margaret Vick, special counsel to the Colorado River Indian Tribes, at the June 2019 Getches-Wilkinson Center Summer Water Conference at the University of Colorado-Boulder. After a history of being taken advantage of, the tribes are now “partners with the state legislative leaders,” she said.

The four tribes agreed to take 10,000 acres of farmland out of production for three years, allowing the water to instead remain in Lake Mead. In return, the tribes receive $38 million, including $30 million from the state and $8 million from the Environmental Defense Fund and the Walton Family Foundation.

“I don’t think Arizona could have met their requirements without the water that the tribes put on the table,” says Larry MacDonnell, an adjunct law professor at the University of Colorado-Boulder and a member of the Colorado River Research Group.

CALIFORNIA

C

alifornia has different tensions. The state has more Colorado River water, 4.4 million acre-feet, the majority of it claimed for agriculture prior to the Colorado River Compact.

About a quarter of southern California’s water comes from the Colorado River. Metropolitan

Water District of Southern California delivers this Colorado River water, along with water imported from northern California, to smaller agencies that collectively serve 19 million people. Metropolitan’s basic annual apportionment of Colorado River water is 550,000 acre-feet, and it gets about 400,000 of additional Colorado River water through transfers and exchanges, largely from irrigation districts. Under the DCP, if Lake Mead drops below 1,045 feet, California will contribute between 200,000 and 350,000 acre-feet of water a year, depending on the lake’s elevation. Because of the wet year in 2018–2019, Reclamation estimates a less than 10 percent chance that the reservoir will fall to that level by 2026.

California’s contribution under the DCP is shared by two of the state’s three big irrigation districts and Metropolitan. Initially, the Imperial Irrigation District (IID) was also planning to participate. It conditionally approved the plan in December 2018 but in March 2019, just before a federal deadline, IID decided it would not support the DCP as negotiated because one of its conditions—federal funding for the Salton Sea—had not been satisfied. Metropolitan’s board of directors voted to contribute an additional 250,000 acre-feet to Lake Mead if necessary to cover the © Jenny Ross/jennyross.com

Imperial Irrigation District’s portion. But these contributions are not permanent. Metropolitan, along with others in California, Arizona and Nevada, can in the future withdraw water left in Lake Mead under a provision in the 2007 guidelines called “intentionally created surplus,” or ICS. ICS water is made through projects that create water system efficiency, conservation, or even importation of water into the Colorado River Basin. ICS water temporarily augments reservoir levels but is then available for later drafting by whomever contributed it. The Bureau of Reclamation reported provisionally that in 2018 Nevada had 700,448 acre-feet, California 698,432 acre-feet, and Arizona 343,052 acre-feet of ICS water stored in Mead.

This water might better be understood as a savings deposit. Metropolitan has stored and withdrawn water three times. But what if an entity wants to withdraw when those savings are most desperately needed? Imagine the scene from the movie “It’s a Wonderful Life,” when the panicked townspeople of Bedford Falls show up at the savings and loan, demanding their C-notes.

Brad Udall, senior scientist and scholar at Colorado State University, told a U.S. House subcommittee in February 2019 that this illustrated

↑ Sprinklers, pumping Colorado River water, irrigate vegetable seedlings in California’s Imperial Valley.

Unconsumed water from this farm and others in the Imperial Irrigation District percolates into the soil and eventually flows into the Salton Sea, the lowest area in the valley.

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Just as it is hydrologically connected to the Colorado River, the Salton Sea is inseparable from the DCP, and any attempt to sweep it aside or pretend it doesn’t exist is as unsustainable as it is cynical.”

Erik Ortega Imperial Irrigation District

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an implicit flaw in the concept. “These water storage efforts allowed us to push the problem forward in time, hoping Mother Nature will rescue us,” Udall said.

Bill Hasencamp, manager of Colorado River resources for Metropolitan, says his agency’s savings balance is responsible for about a 12-foot increase in Mead—contributing significantly to keeping the reservoir out of shortage. But he agrees that the savings device is not the long-term answer to the oversubscribed Colorado River Basin. “Eventually we have to make some permanent cuts in the lower basin, and that’s what we’re gearing up for in 2026 negotiations,” Hasencamp says.

More tension revolves around the shrinking Salton Sea, located 125 miles northeast of San Diego. It’s an ancient sea bed, below sea level, and filled sporadically through the ages by the Colorado River as it wandered on various paths toward the ocean. Its current iteration dates to 1905, when the river wrestled free of an attempt to channel it into orderly submission. It’s a shallow, salty marvel with twice the surface area of Lake Tahoe that also serves as a major stop for migrating birds, some listed on state and federal endangered and threatened lists, along the Pacific Flyway.

Water levels were sustained by 1.3 million acrefeet of annual runoff from Imperial Valley farms until 2003, when the Imperial Irrigation District began transferring water saved through conservation measures to San Diego County, Metropolitan, and the Coachella Valley Water District. The sea has fallen 9 feet since those transfers began, the saline water lapping onto shore at 237 feet below sea level in July 2019. As it does, the Salton becomes saltier, some 4 million tons of salt arriving through farm runoff each year, increasing the salinity 1 percent annually.

The Pacific Institute’s Michael Cohen, whose work for the past 20 years has focused on revitalizing the Salton Sea, identifies two problems. First is the decline of the sea in size and in its capacity for sustaining fish. It has dramatically fewer fish than 20 years ago, which in turn sustain resident and migratory birds. Birds have also lost roosting and breeding habitat.

A second issue is the human health impact of the wind blowing chemical-laden dust from the receding shores. The 650,000 residents of the Coachella and Imperial valleys already had a high incidence of asthma. The American Lung Association gives Imperial County an “F” score in high ozone and particulate pollution. The county seat, El Centro, is ranked eighth worst among 203 metro areas across the country for annual particle pollution. As transfers from irrigation districts to cities ramp up in the next decade, Salton Sea

levels are expected to drop another 15 feet or so, exposing more toxic dust and more chronic respiratory issues. The shoreline by then will have receded 5 miles since 2003.

A 10-year Salton Sea mitigation plan, approved in 2017, has had stubby financial legs. To implement the phase-one plan requires $400 million, of which $300 million has somewhat belatedly been secured. That’s just the start of a longer-term plan for wetlands restoration and other mitigation.

For the Imperial Irrigation District, mitigating Salton Sea problems became the defining issue in the DCP. The district has legal rights to 18 to 20 percent of all Colorado River Basin water, 3.1 million acre-feet altogether, including use of 2.68 million acre-feet pre-compact, as of 2019. District directors in December voted to support the overall DCP framework. However, that support was contingent upon the federal government delivering $200 million for Salton Sea remediation.

Led by Metropolitan, California supported the DCP without the provision of contingency upon the federal funding. In March, Imperial sued Metropolitan and three other water districts, citing absence of a thorough environmental review of the drought plan. “Just as it is hydrologically connected to the Colorado River, the Salton Sea is inseparable from the DCP, and any attempt to sweep it aside or pretend it doesn’t exist is as unsustainable as it is cynical,” said Erik Ortega, president of the district, in a March 1 statement.

“We all need to cross the finish line together, in California and across the two basins, but that won’t happen by taking shortcuts, environmental, economic or otherwise.”

In April 2019, on the day President Trump signed the DCP into law, Imperial asked a California court to suspend approvals of the lower basin DCP until after an environmental analysis was completed. With that, California, the lower basin, and all seven basin states moved forward on the DCP without the Imperial Irrigation District and without solving the problem of the Salton Sea.

MEXICO

M

exico is also part of the Colorado River Basin, apportioned 1.5 million acre-feet annually by the 1944 Mexican Water Treaty. It, too, is a partner in the effort to keep Mead from declining. A 2012 binational agreement specified that a shortage declaration under the 2007 interim guidelines would reduce deliveries to Mexico of up to 125,000 acre-feet. That agreement, Minute 319, also produced the historic 2014 pulse flow that used Mexico’s water stored in Lake Mead to wet the delta for the first time

in 16 years. Minute 319 has since been supplanted by Minute 323. Signed in 2017, Minute 323 authorizes Mexico to continue storing water in Lake Mead and also commits the United States to financially support water efficiency projects in Mexico with the goal of leaving 200,000 acrefeet of water in Mead to benefit both countries.

It also requires both countries to provide water and funding for delta habitat restoration.

Looking forward, Jennifer Pitt, director of Audubon’s Colorado River Program, sees need to build on existing binational relationships. “I think Mexico has already demonstrated that they are willing to be a partner in the equitable distribution of shortages, and I don’t think we should expect any different,” she says. Equitable, she believes, means proportionate to the shortages absorbed by the lower basin states.

Both the DCP and Minute 323 will expire in 2026. Negotiations between the U.S. and Mexico to determine what comes next after Minute 323, the DCP, and the interim guidelines, “will be tied to their implementation and operating experience [of Minute 323] between now and then,” Pitt says.

Minute 323 identifies specific projects but has no provision for another pulse flow. Pitt sees the river delta being like the Salton Sea: undeniably a part of the Colorado River Basin. The drying of the delta was the first visible signal of water imbalance.

Courtesy Pronatura Noroeste

“If you care about humanity’s ability to sustain nature around us, particularly as we grapple ever more intensely with the impact of climate change, I think [the delta] is a poster child of ‘can we do something about it?’” she says. Doing something about it means finding water to create a more resilient ecosystem that can address the habitat needs of birds that used that area as part of their migration path, she says. That this ecosystem is in Mexico also matters. “If the restoration effort were to be abandoned, we don’t know if Mexico would be as willing to share in the shortages with other water users,” Pitt says.

↑ Volunteers working with Pronatura Noroeste through the San Luis Reforesta initiative plant native trees in Miguel Aleman near the Colorado River in Mexico. These restoration teams have planted more than 275,000 willows, cottonwoods, mesquite and palo verde trees in three managed restoration sites near the Colorado River Delta since 2014.

WHAT’S NEXT?

E

ven before the DCP was signed in May 2019, eyes were already on replacement of the interim guidelines and the DCP. It poses a greater challenge yet. The word “drought” probably should be discarded in the 2026 document’s title because the big overlapping issues of climate change and structural deficit that it must address are broader. “Hard issues left unresolved by the DCP will make the coming negotiations even more challenging,” said Udall in his February testimony to the U.S. House subcommittee.

But the DCP also marks several major achievements. The work was more inclusive, more deliberate in bringing tribes and environmental H E A DWAT E R S FA L L 2 0 1 9

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If you care about humanity’s ability to sustain nature around us, particularly as we grapple ever more intensely with the impact of climate change, I think [the delta] is a poster child of ‘can we do something about it?’”

Jennifer Pitt Audubon

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Gulls and shorebirds fly over the Salton Sea, where more than 400 bird species have been recorded. The sea is a critical inland wetland habitat for many bird species, including migratory birds on the Pacific Flyway, but birds are being impacted by water level drops and increasing salinity in the sea.

groups to the table, both of them often overlooked or strictly adversarial in the past. Even where it failed, there was success, as the Colorado River Research Group, in a May 2019 paper, pointed out: “Two of the most problematic features of the current management framework—the inability of Pinal County, Arizona, farmers to easily absorb CAP curtailments, and the environmental and public health challenges associated with limiting Salton Sea inflows—have influenced, and are influenced by, matters that were heretofore considered outside of basin water management planning.”

Too, the DCP carved a path, concrete in its details and immediate in its consequences, to reconcile reality with diversions. Based on the plan’s provisions, the Bureau of Reclamation in August 2019 ordered reduced deliveries to Arizona of 192,000 acre-feet and to Nevada of 8,000 acrefeet in 2020. In addition, under its supplemental treaty agreement, Mexico gets 41,000 acre-feet less. Those cuts were based on projections that Mead’s water would be below 1,090 feet, the new cushion level, on January 1, 2020. That water must remain in the reservoir until Mead rises above an elevation of 1,100 feet. These are the first, marked

acknowledgements of the 21st century hydrologic realities.

In Arizona, David White, deputy director of the Julie Ann Wrigley Global Institute of Sustainability at Arizona State University, sees the template that emerged dwarfing the details in importance.

“That was a very big win for the state,” says White.

Creating an open, transparent process for figuring out how to apportion cuts was vital.

The Arizona Republic was of a like mind.

“Let’s be clear. This deal isn’t perfect. It’s costly and painful, and it solves exactly zero of our water problems,” it wrote in a January 31, 2019, editorial. “All DCP does is buy us time. But it showed us how to solve our problems and move forward in a drier future.” H Allen Best has driven along the Colorado River from Hoover Dam, near Las Vegas, to San Luis Rio Colorado, at the U.S.-Mexican border, pausing to study all evident “plumbing fixtures." On these trips he has also watched at length the harvest of broccoli and other winter vegetables produced near Yuma, Arizona, with water originating in the fields of snow at the Colorado River headwaters in Colorado, where he lived for much of his life. © Jenny Ross/jennyross.com

Pulse

Welcoming Tribes to the Table

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BY KELLY BASTONE hen the Colorado River Basin states hashed out the 2007 Interim Guidelines for Lower Basin Shortages, they failed to involve the 29 tribes that also hold water rights to this lifeblood watershed. Nor were tribes initially included in the 2012 Colorado River Basin Water Supply and Demand Study, which only incorporated tribal input after tribes fought for seats at the table. The pattern of exclusion infuriated the sovereign nations— which hold water rights to some 20 percent of the Colorado River’s volume. According to the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, quantified tribal water rights comprise about 2.9 million acre-feet in the basin, but 12 tribes hold unresolved water rights claims.

So the tribes revived the languishing Ten Tribes Partnership, established in 1992 to promote Native American involvement in Colorado River Basin discussions. The revitalized collective worked with the U.S. Department of the Interior and the Bureau of Reclamation to conduct the 2018 Tribal Water Study, which builds on the 2012 findings by shining a light on tribal water resources and how their eventual development might impact river operations.

The study became a turning point for tribal involvement in Colorado River management.

By bringing wayward stakeholders to the table, it ushered in an unprecedented era of collaboration. “Our success has always been through a collaborative path,” says Daryl Vigil, water administrator for the Jicarilla Apache Nation and spokesperson for the Ten Tribes Partnership.

But the study also revealed discrepancies in tribes’ capacity to develop their water rights. Some claims remain unsettled or in dispute, while others are hampered by decades of legislation that ignored tribal rights to Colorado Basin water.

To bridge those gaps, Vigil co-founded the Water and Tribes Initiative, a nexus of tribes, federal agencies, academics, law experts and conservationists crafting

a template that tribes can use to build capacity and participate in water dialogues.

“No one’s going to build a pathway for tribes,” Vigil says. But by participating in the initiative, the sovereigns can identify their needs and share solutions.

“You can’t determine what is possible unless you engage other stakeholders,” said Stephen Roe Lewis, governor of the Gila River Indian Community, at the Water Education Foundation’s Colorado River Symposium in September 2019. “Leadership is essential in important issues. It’s important to know who you’re negotiating with on the other side of the table—once we find that table,” Lewis said.

Meanwhile, the Ten Tribes Partnership has initiated frank conversations with state and federal leadership. In 2017, during the Colorado River Water Users Association’s annual meeting, the group

facilitated discussions on changing the siloed paradigm. Subsequent luncheons staged additional dialogue between tribal and non-tribal water managers. The key question: How will the next set of operating guidelines look?

“We hope that by next year, we’ll have a sketch,” says Vigil. But already, the basin tribes have significantly increased their representation and participation in water discussions.

The conversations have also built support for the tribes’ mission to “lead from a spiritual mandate to protect the sacred waters of the Colorado and keep it available for the benefit of all living creatures.” To people outside the tribes, “that can sound like frou-frou stuff,” admits Vigil. “But we’re working on that. Because if you don’t have a healthy, sustainable, living river, then the rest doesn’t matter.” H

Governor Stephen Roe Lewis is a leader of the Gila River Indian Community, the Central Arizona Project’s (CAP) single largest contract, with 311,000 acre-feet conveyed to it through CAP. Gov. Lewis negotiated on behalf of the community during drought contingency plan talks and, with an agreed-upon mitigation package, will take less water out of the Colorado River during periods of shortage.

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Pulse ← When the 2014 pulse flow brought water back to the long-dry Colorado River Delta, Mexicans celebrated, bringing galloping horses into the river, fishing, and playing in the water.

An International Model for Transboundary River Cooperation

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BY DANA STRONGIN he threat of scarcity on the Colorado River could have caused the United States and Mexico to compete.

Instead, they are collaborating. The two countries made major strides in the past decade to address scarcity by establishing agreements known as “minutes” that build upon the 1944 Mexican Water Treaty.

In 2012, they signed Minute 319, which hailed a more holistic, broader reach for river management, thanks to a robust negotiation table that included nongovernmental organizations. NGOs realized they were more likely to see

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results through binational collaboration, rather than a lawsuit or campaign, says Jennifer Pitt, Audubon’s Colorado River Program director.

“To make this work, you need water users at the table, you need states at the table, you need environmental groups at the table. You need to hear from all of them and engage them in implementation,” she says.

Through Minute 319, the U.S. and Mexico formed a partnership to share in water shortage and surplus. The agreement also set aside water for the parched Colorado River Delta, which provided the 2014 pulse flow that brought Colorado River water to

the Gulf of California for the first time in 16 years.

Minute 323, signed in 2017, expands on lessons learned during the five-year span of Minute 319. With this minute and related guidelines set to sunset in 2026, stakeholders on both sides of the border have a lot of work to do.

Groups are planning to release the environmental flows set aside in Minute 323 in more frequent, smaller volumes.

Restoration efforts continue to support native cottonwood, willow and mesquite tree habitat. And stakeholders are exploring options to help the Mexicali Valley become resilient to the Colorado River’s declining supply, an effort Pitt says is critical to Mexico’s role in sharing scarcity.

A key element of Minute 323—the establishment of a binational water scarcity plan—can move forward now that the U.S. fulfilled its own commitment to establishing a drought contingency plan in May. It will take work and time before we see how drought contingency planning works, in practice, to protect the entire Colorado River system, said Brenda Burman, commissioner for the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, at the Water Education Foundation’s Colorado River Symposium in late September. This is possible as long as both countries continue to work together, she says. “I am very optimistic about the success of our binational relationship.”

Pitt says results come from investing in relationships and building trust, both at the negotiation table and the dinner table.

“Making sure that we break bread together is enormously important. Those personal relationships, we depend on them to push the work forward. If you don’t have that trust in relationships, the more formal progress doesn’t seem possible.” H Dana Strongin is a freelance journalist, writer and editor based in central Colorado.

Peter McBride

UP PER BAS IN

AVOIDING LAKE POWELL’S DAY ZERO For the upper basin, it's all about putting water behind Glen Canyon Dam, with plenty of questions about how to do it

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hile the ink was still drying on the final draft of the Colorado River Drought Contingency Plan (DCP), policy makers in Colorado were turning their attention to the bigger challenge ahead.

With the agreement’s signing in May 2019, the state and its neighboring upper Colorado River Basin states of New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming were granted the ability to bank conserved water in Lake Powell and other upper basin reservoirs

in case of a future water crisis—but only if the states agree on an upper basin demand management program. Getting all the parties on the Colorado River to agree to that so-called “drought pool” in Lake Powell was difficult, but designing the demand management program to get water into the pool will be much harder. Determining when to release water from the pool could also prove challenging.

Demand management is water conservation on such a large scale that it reduces the amount of water drawn from the river in a significant, measurable way. If the upper basin states develop a

BY LINDSAY FENDT EcoFlight

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UP P E R BASI N

Every single person, whether you’re on the West Slope or in Denver or Sterling, you are seeing water that comes from the Colorado River system. This means that everyone has a stake in the Colorado River whether or not they live near it.”

James Eklund Squire Patton Boggs

← PRECEDING PAGE: Lake Powell, created with the 1963 completion of Glen Canyon Dam, is the upper basin’s largest reservoir on the Colorado River.

But 2000-2019 has provided the least amount of inflow into the reservoir, making it the lowest 20-year period since the dam was built, as evidenced by the “bathtub ring” and dry land edging the reservoir, which was underwater in the past. As of October 1, 2019, Powell was 55 percent full.

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demand management program, they will collectively use less water, then track, deliver and bank those savings in upper basin reservoirs. That water could be sent downstream when flows are low to meet the upper basin’s commitment to the lower basin states and Mexico, as outlined under the 1922 Colorado River Compact and subsequent agreements.

The compact stipulates that the upper basin states must not deplete the flow of the river at Lee Ferry below 75 million acre-feet based on a 10year running average. Although the upper basin is a long way from running out of water, if the future brings more dry years and low reservoir levels, as is projected, it will become increasingly difficult to send water downstream while still meeting upper basin water needs. If the lower basin does not receive its share of water, a legal battle could ensue, threatening water rights in the upper basin—so the upper basin complies with the compact to maintain control over its own water supply.

The DCP lays out processes for how this might be achieved but is only in effect through 2026, at which time the federal government, in consultation with all Colorado River Basin states, will reconsider how the system should be operated.

Exploring demand management is just one of the upper basin’s commitments under the DCP—the other two elements include a new plan to move water from smaller upper basin reservoirs to Lake Powell, and finally, water supply augmentation. As a whole, the upper basin’s DCP aims to maintain storage volumes at Lake Powell, enabling continued hydropower generation, thereby funding continued operation of the reservoir system and use of Colorado River water in the upper basin. But demand management could be part of the upper basin’s strategy.

So work is underway to determine what demand management might look like, if a program is developed. “There are still a lot of big ifs,” said Brent Newman, the former interstate and federal section leader for the Colorado Water Conservation Board, during a presentation in August.

Newman was addressing about a dozen people gathered in the Summit County Library in Silverthorne for the first meeting of the Economic and Local Governments Working Group on demand management. The group of county commissioners, lawyers, consultants and utility managers will spend the next year identifying critical issues for the feasibility of a demand management program.

As the meeting closed, the group filled three large boards with sticky notes of questions and possible problems with demand management, issues to be hashed out in the coming months.

Similar brainstorming sessions are playing out across the state in eight other working groups,

each dedicated to exploring demand management from a different perspective, like agriculture and the environment. Simultaneously, each of the other upper basin states is also examining how it could approach demand management. Unless all four upper basin states agree, there will be no demand management program.

This massive planning effort from four different states will cost millions of dollars and require tough negotiations. And while each upper basin state is putting its best foot forward to create a plan, there is no guarantee that conditions will get bad enough that it will be needed. There’s also no guarantee that a demand management plan will be adopted—and even if adopted, will it be adopted in time to make a difference?

THE DCP AND COLORADO

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ver the last 20 years, the Colorado River has experienced extreme drought, unprecedented in modern history. Now, states throughout the West are planning for a future with less water, and for good reason—modeling shows an increasing likelihood of water shortage in the basin. According to Phase III of the Colorado River Risk Study, an effort completed in June 2019, the upper basin faces a 45 percent chance of a water shortage in the next 25 years at current water use levels. If upper basin water use increases by just 11.5 percent, that risk doubles, creating a 90 percent chance of coming up short, the study says.

Instead of tumbling unprepared into shortage, representatives from the seven states that rely on the Colorado River created the DCP to stave off a future water crisis by readying for dry times.

The objective of the DCP, which is really two plans, one for the upper basin and one for the lower, is to prevent water in the river system and its two primary reservoirs—Lake Powell and Lake Mead —from dropping too low. Reaching these critical levels would trigger a crisis-level response in the region with some states taking significant reductions in their water allocations and some areas losing access to clean power due to the loss of production from the reservoirs’ hydroelectric dams. The revenue earned from hydropower contracts is used to fund conservation for rivers and programs like endangered fish recovery. The loss in funding would also limit the government’s ability to run the dams and distribute any water remaining in storage.

The lower basin’s DCP laid out cuts in lower basin water use that are tied to projected reservoir levels. But the upper basin is in a different position. Its DCP gives the upper basin tools to manage its water supply in case of shortage, which

should help it meet its obligations under the 1922 compact and avoid involuntary cutbacks. The first of these tools, which is really the basin’s first line of defense in protecting Lake Powell’s storage levels, is a new mechanism to move water from upstream reservoirs down to Powell when Lake Powell is facing a critically low level, what is known as the Drought Response Operations Agreement.

The second is a 500,000 acre-foot storage pool in upper basin reservoirs, which the basin can use to store water from a demand management program, if such a program is deemed feasible and adopted. The third, known as augmentation, which is already in use, is a combination of cloud seeding to stimulate precipitation, and the control of phreatophytes like tamarisk and Russian olive, which are deep-rooted non-native plants that soak up water from riverways.

Over the next several years, the upper basin will use these tools and determine whether to bank water for shortage. While the upper basin’s work is just beginning, it could shift the way water has been managed in the West for more than a century.

This possible shift matters to water users across Colorado, that’s why the scene of the demand management workgroup in Summit County yielded three boards covered in questions and concerns. The Colorado River starts as snow high in Colorado’s Rocky Mountains. In the spring, it melts down into a web of tributaries that flow across the upper basin states into the river’s mainstem. Each of the basin states relies heavily on water from the river, but Colorado, in particular, plays an outsized role in how the Colorado River water system works. Colorado snowmelt contributes about 70 percent of the total flow of the Colorado River.

But Colorado also gets the lion’s share of the upper basin’s water—it can use 51.75 percent of the upper basin’s allocation per the Upper Colorado River Basin Compact of 1948. Colorado’s average annual consumptive use of Colorado River water is about 2.5 million acre-feet, according to the Colorado River Risk Study. And though only about 20 percent of the state’s population lives in the greater Colorado River Basin—which in Colorado includes not only the Colorado Basin but all West Slope rivers such as the Gunnison, Yampa, White, San Juan, San Miguel, and other smaller tributaries—more than 570,000 acre-feet of Colorado River water is piped across the Continental Divide each year, reaching the Rio Grande, South Platte and Arkansas basins. More than 80 percent of the state’s population lives along the Front Range, where transbasin diversion water accounts for about 60 percent of water use. Users of Colorado

River water range from municipalities to farmers to industrial users like oil and gas operations.

“Every single person, whether you’re on the West Slope or in Denver or Sterling, you are seeing water that comes from the Colorado River system,” says James Eklund, the former Colorado commissioner for the Upper Colorado River Commission, an interstate agency comprised of the four states in the upper basin. “This means that everyone has a stake in the Colorado River whether or not they live near it.”

If a severe water shortage resulted in the upper basin not meeting its compact obligations, water rights across the state would be at risk of curtailment. Although no curtailment procedure has been decided upon, water rights adjudicated after 1922, the year the compact was signed, are often considered to be more at risk than pre-1922 rights. In Colorado, transbasin diversions serving the state’s population center constitute more than half of the state’s post-compact depletions, which means that Front Range municipal water users, though geographically disconnected from the Colorado, have an extreme interest in protecting the river and Lake Powell reservoir levels—thus in seeing the upper basin DCP succeed.

If the actions in the upper basin’s DCP aren’t sufficient to protect reservoir levels in Lake Powell and if releases below Lee Ferry were too low and violated the compact, a compact deficit could result and lead to involuntary curtailment.

DROUGHT RESPONSE OPERATIONS AGREEMENT

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ather than a step-by-step plan, the upper basin’s DCP is all about process. The new elements of the DCP, the Drought Response Operations Agreement and demand management, are plans to create a plan if conditions warrant it. The plan first lays out strategies to maintain water levels in Lake Powell during a drought. If those operations are not enough, the agreement describes how water from the three federal storage projects in the upper basin—Fontenelle in Wyoming, Flaming Gorge in Wyoming and Utah, Navajo in New Mexico and Colorado, and the Aspinall Unit which is composed of Blue Mesa, Crystal and Morrow Point reservoirs in Colorado—could be used to bolster storage volumes in Lake Powell.

The agreement does not designate how much water will be sent downstream or specify which reservoir will make the release, it simply says those negotiations will begin once the Bureau of Reclamation’s 24-month study models indicate that Lake Powell might fall below the target elevation of 3,525 feet mean sea level.

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U P P E R BASI N

The whole object here is that we want to maximize our existing abilities at these units to send water to Lake Powell.”

Amy Haas Upper Colorado River Commission

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The three reservoir units, along with Glen Canyon Dam in Arizona, were authorized with the Colorado River Storage Project (CRSP) Act in 1956 to stabilize the upper basin’s water supply against variability in the Colorado River. Since the CRSP units were built, their water has been used to fulfill water rights throughout the upper basin, satisfy increasing water demand, and meet environmental standards for river flows. The U.S. Interior Secretary oversees the reservoirs and determines their operations every year.

While the original CRSP Act was designed with the idea of storing and releasing water to meet the compact agreements, it does not clarify the states’ roles in this process. By laying out this process in the Drought Response Operations Agreement, the upper basin states and the federal government clarified how they would interact—hopefully avoiding future conflict—if reservoir releases become necessary to protect Lake Powell storage.

“The whole object here is that we want to maximize our existing abilities at these units to send water to Lake Powell,” says Amy Haas, the executive director and secretary of the Upper Colorado River Commission, adding, “but if we have 10 years of hydrology just like this [year], it may never come to pass.”

The agreement also sets ground rules for how those negotiations would play out. First, any water releases from the reservoirs would need to fit within the existing records of decision and biological opinions, including each reservoir’s existing environmental impact study in accordance with the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA).

Any reservoir releases also must come with a plan to refill the water that was released to Lake Powell once hydrological conditions improve. The agreement also stipulates that if a facility makes a release one year, the other two facilities will be considered first if further need arises, before tapping the same reservoir twice.

The Drought Response Operations Agreement is the first plan of attack for the upper basin in case of a shortage. While this could be executed without too much controversy, there are still some concerns with the agreement.

The first concern is that while the agreement places three of the upper basin’s federal water storage projects on the table for water releases, both the Aspinall Unit and Navajo Reservoir have very little additional water available each year. This puts a burden on Flaming Gorge as the reservoir most likely to make a release. The second issue is that, while all of the states’ attorney general’s offices call for actions taken under the Drought Response Operations Agreement to fit

in existing NEPA permitting, some believe that a new environmental impact study under NEPA might be required before releases can be made to Lake Powell. Even with these issues, the Drought Response Operations Agreement is mostly uncontested. It’s the second element of the Upper Basin DCP—demand management—that could mark a paradigm shift in Western water law.

DEMAND MANAGEMENT

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hen people think of water conservation, they typically think of home-grown efforts to take shorter showers. But with a demand management program, the upper basin states would work collectively to use less water and bank those savings in Lake Powell or other CRSP reservoirs. If necessary, that water could be sent to the lower basin to comply with the compact. Although this may seem like a common-sense solution, it’s complicated by the laws surrounding water rights.

“The reason that it is a problem legally is that our whole water law framework is set up to encourage maximum utilization of water,” says Anne Castle, senior fellow at the University of Colorado’s Getches-Wilkinson Center for Natural Resources, Energy, and the Environment and former assistant secretary for water and science with the Department of the Interior. “So the way our laws work is that if you’re not using your full entitlement of water then other people get to use it.”

Because of the legal framework surrounding Western water, water conservation is not simply a matter of turning off the taps. Large-scale conservation only occurs when conserved water is accounted for and, in the case of demand management, that water must also reach its target area without being diverted by a downstream user, a process known as shepherding. This is more complicated when moving water through multiple states, as the water authorities in each state must shepherd the water downstream. Calculating the quantity of conserved water is also challenging.

Some of the water saved through demand management will evaporate or be lost through transit as it moves down the river, and lost water isn't considered conserved.

These legal and technical issues must be solved before a demand management program is implemented, but the DCP didn’t create a program, the DCP simply makes exploring such a program possible.

Before diving into the details of how to conserve water, the upper basin needed the ability to bank its savings in a CRSP reservoir. While there is room in Lake Powell—which has been

hovering at around 50 percent full—prior to the DCP, any water in Lake Powell was considered unused by the upper basin and therefore was subject to release to the lower basin. But the DCP authorized a pool of up to 500,000 acrefeet for the upper basin to store water in CRSP reservoirs to be used, if needed, to comply with the compact. This water can be tracked and accounted for, and cannot be called for by the lower basin.

“This is a big change to the Law of the River, and a new wrinkle in the way the river is managed,” says Newman, who was leading the demand management work for the CWCB. “But there is a lot to do before one drop of water can be stored in that pool.”

First, each state must assess the feasibility of a demand management program. The states are considering everything from specifying how much water each state would need to contribute to the pool, to identifying what laws to modify, if any.

Each state also needs to ensure that water users participating in the program can do so voluntarily and temporarily and will be compensated for the water they conserve. The costs of such a program are still unclear, but the four-year System Conservation Pilot Program, which ended in 2018 and can be likened to demand management, paid an average of $205 per acre-foot for conserved water. The pilot program was implemented on the ground in various places, including with the Grand Valley Water Users Association, where 10 members took more than 1,000 acres of land out of production and, in 2017, received $560 per acre to help make up for the crops they would have grown otherwise. That year, the project returned an estimated 3,200 acre-feet of water to the Colorado River—a drop in the bucket.

That program and the Colorado River Water Bank Workgroup, which started in 2009 and has since evolved, gave Colorado a head start into considering some of these questions. But there’s more to learn, says Taylor Hawes, Colorado River Program Director for The Nature Conservancy, who has long been involved with these water banking discussions.

Even after years of studies, the workgroup made the most significant progress when the System Conservation Pilot Program put water banking to the test on the ground. So Hawes recommends piloting demand management. “It’s in our best interest to have a program up and running, to see what the kinks are and what the critical needs are, to be in a better position to negotiate for that,” Hawes says. Negotiations to determine what will happen in 2026 could begin next year, so there’s reason for Colorado and the other upper basin Matthew Staver

states to get practice. “We could easily overcomplicate it. We need to be really systematic in our thinking on how to work through these issues. It is feasible so I hope we can put a plan in place and start to test it a little bit to make sure it can work for all sectors in the long run.”

In addition to the technical logistics, the upper basin states must account for attitudes about demand management. “There’s a general curiosity about what demand management will or could be,” says Kelsea Macilroy, a Ph.D candidate in Sociology at Colorado State University. Macilroy, in a project for The Nature Conservancy, spoke with 34 West Slope agricultural stakeholders in May 2019 to hear about perceptions and barriers to demand management. She heard from an equal number of people who said they would never participate in a demand management program and people who were excited about it. She heard people question if demand management is an opportunity, a burden, or both.

She also unveiled cultural beliefs that shape how the West Slope responds to the idea of demand management. “When the demand management conversation arises, it triggers these historical injustices,” Macilroy says, like loss of

↑ Taylor Hawes, Colorado River Program director for The Nature Conservancy, has been involved with water banking discussions and studies since 2009.

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U P P E R B ASI N

Brent Newman, head of the Colorado Water Conservation Board’s Interstate and Federal Section, is coordinating nine work groups around the state to discuss, study, and determine whether Colorado will develop a demand management program.

Pictured here, the Economic and Local Governments Working Group first met in August 2019 at the Summit County Library and came away with a slew of questions.

Our concern is that without a plan, it will be social and economic chaos in Colorado [if a series of dry years occur].

As water leaders we can do better than that. ” Taylor Hawes The Nature Conservancy

other natural resource industries such as logging in southwestern Colorado, for example. “I heard, almost unanimously, people referencing buy and dry. Not only that water could be taken away but that a way of life is under attack. That this is just the next thing that threatens the way that we live that’s coming from the Front Range,” she says.

But Front Range water managers are eager to share in demand management. “From a Front Range perspective, this problem of reducing demand is not a Front Range [versus] West Slope issue. It’s a whole state issue. It’s an upper basin issue,” said Jim Lochhead CEO/manager of Denver Water at the Society of Environmental Journalists conference in October 2019. Denver Water, which receives about 50 percent of its supply from Colorado River sources developed after the 1922 compact and serves about a quarter of the state’s entire population, has a lot to lose if supplies are curtailed without a plan in place. Thus, the utility plans to cut water use along with other water users if a demand management program is created. “Our participation is not just funding someone else to use less water,” Lochhead says.

“Our obligation is to participate equitably with other geographic regions in Colorado to create wet water that will get to Powell.”

Questions around demand management are deep and many, but for the time being, each state has separated to internally assess whether a program is feasible. In Colorado, the process is with the CWCB’s nine workgroups. The CWCB has $1.7 million for demand management at its disposal, which will be used for meeting logistics, for commissioning some consulting work to study feasibility for demand management, and for other relevant needs. This first round of funding expires in June 2020.

As every state conducts its own process, interstate issues are also being discussed through the Upper Colorado River Commission. If any one state decides that demand management is not feasible, it could serve as a veto for the entire basin.

While there is no hard deadline for the formation of a demand management program, the DCP agreements expire in 2026, and the availability of the 500,000 acre-foot conservation pool arrangement for upper basin use is only guaranteed until then.

If the states reach consensus and create a program, it will be reviewed by the lower basin, and subject to approval from the Upper Colorado River Commission and the Department of the Interior.

The DCP also requires the upper basin to create a plan for verifying the amount of water conserved by demand management. The plan could then move forward only if the Upper Colorado River Commission determines that conservation is necessary in order to maintain compact compliance.

If the region has another series of wet years, the plan may never go forward. But in the face of climate change, many believe demand management is critical.

“Our goal is to avoid a crisis,” Hawes says.

“Our concern is that without a plan, it will be social and economic chaos in Colorado [if a series of dry years occurs]. As water leaders we can do better than that. We may never need this plan, but from the science that we’re seeing, we will need this plan, and we should keep the pressure on to create a program so that we will be ready when that day comes.” H Lindsay Fendt is an award-winning freelance journalist and photographer. She covers the environment, health and policy from Denver, Colorado.

Lindsay Fendt

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MISSION: IMPACT Water Education Colorado is the leading organization for informing and engaging Coloradans on water.

his issue we’re featuring Varra Companies, a top-level “Headwaters” member. “The interface with water and mining is critical, especially here on the Front Range,” says Garrett Varra, who manages the company founded by his grandparents, together with his cousin Peter. They have 130 employees working on gravel and concrete operations in northeastern Colorado along the St. Vrain, Poudre and South Platte rivers.

Water became Garrett’s responsibility when he entered the family business just after the 2002 drought. Overseeing substitute water supply plans, water court cases and attorney relationships, Garrett quickly realized how central water issues were to the company—and how invisible they can be to the average citizen. “That’s what started drawing me toward WEco.” Garrett joined the South Platte Basin Roundtable in 2015, where he is the current chair. In 2016, he enrolled in WEco’s Water Fluency program, seeking broader

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“That’s when we made the decision to support financially the mission of WEco,” he says of Water Fluency. “There’s a lack of understanding of the complexities of water, and how closely linked it is to the future of our state.”

Today, Garrett also finds WEco’s network of fellow members invaluable in answering tough questions. Thank you Varra Companies for your support!

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INNOVATIVE THINKING Prairie Waters

95% of Aurora’s water is fully reusable. Full utilization simply makes sense

London Mine Water Rights

A unique water source that is environmental friendly & fully reusable

Rocky Ford

Aurora’s continued farming program keeps agricultural vibrant and economically viable

Water Conservation

Aurora Water has award winning efforts that educate & incentivize customers through dynamic water-wise programs

WISE Partnership

Using water wisely through collaboration to meet water needs

Learn more about Aurora Water’s innovative thinking.

AuroraGov.org/WaterInnovation